Agence France-Presse, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said August 22 that Iraq would fall apart and regional wars would develop if U.S.-led coalition forces were to suddenly withdraw from his country.
“The sudden withdrawal of American troops in Iraq would cause the collapse of Iraq and will lead to the disintegration of and division within Iraq,” he told Alhurra Television in an interview.
“Sudden withdrawal would also mean regional interventions and conflicts. These conflicts will drag the region into regional wars,” Zebari told the Virginia-based, Congress-funded non-profit corporation.
Zebari’s comments coincided with a speech August 22 by President George W. Bush, in which he compared a withdrawal from Iraq to the U.S. leaving Vietnam in 1973, a mistake that Bush said “was paid by millions of innocent citizens.”
The foreign minister said a military pullout from Iraq would remove a deterrent against “sectarian or civil war at a large scale,” and would embolden al-Qaida to establish “a prominent and real base” in Iraq.
Zebari also said there was evidence that “tens of suicide bombers enter Iraq through Syria to kill themselves and innocent Iraqi civilians,” but that talks with Damascus could solve the problem.
“If Syria has the will and an honest desire to increase security, I believe we could overcome the security problem between the Iraqi and Syrian borders,” said Zebari, according to an English transcript of the interview, which was conducted in Arabic.
